OnLive’s Growth Summed up by Order Number Stats: Cloud Gaming is Exploding

While the OnLive cloud video game service is still in its infancy, as far as traditional video game companies go, the service has really begun to pick up momentum as of late. Over the last year or so, many members of the unofficial OnLive forum, OnLiveFans, graciously provided Order Numbers and Dates from their purchase history. Over 210 data points were gathered and dates ranged from June 2, 2010 (~launch) through September 14, 2011 (now).

Some assumptions can be made from the data:

• Order numbers are sequential, starting at Order Number 100113588
• Each unique order number can represent one of the following activities – a US OnLive membership name reservation (those ended July 1, 2010), PlayPass purchase (full, 3-day, 5-day), PlayPack subscription charge, hardware purchase or any refund.
• Order numbers are not assigned for trial account memberships with no purchase activity.

Below are two charts that show the orders processed by OnLive since June of 2010. These numbers are not official by any means, but rather made by the sequential order numbers that OnLive users provided us:

Since OnLive’s launch in June of 2010, the service maintained a steady rate of purchases from its relatively small, dedicated following. The rate of orders remained fairly steady, with OnLive’s excellent sales causing a notable increase in orders for July and November 2010. As of May 2011, an inexpensive console, an optional subscription plan and some popular titles still did not give Onlive the growth many were expecting. The explosion occurred in August 2011 around the time when PlayPack subscribers received a permanent 30% off, GameStop made a huge blunder, a true game-of-the-year title landed, and the UK launch was closing in. Of particular note, the Order Trend is skyrocketing, and based on the data, it doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.

With the UK launch set for Thursday September 22, 2011, we should only see a continued jump in order numbers in the coming weeks and months.

SOURCE: OnLiveFans.